


I'll Be a Thorn in Your Side

by Bustle



Series: Chrobin Week 2020 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Chrobin Week 2020, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bustle/pseuds/Bustle
Summary: Robin thinks about her true nature, in the aftermath of the battle with Validar. Written for Chrobin Week 2020, Day 2 - Grima and Naga.
Relationships: Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Series: Chrobin Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978207
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	I'll Be a Thorn in Your Side

**Author's Note:**

> _  
> I'll be a thorn in your side  
>  Till you die  
> I'll be a thorn in your side  
> For always_
> 
> Thank you to my beta Scytale!

Robin stormed into the tent she shared with Chrom, casting off her glove as if burned. Six purple eyes glared at her from the back of her hand, and she glared right back.

They would have all been better off if Lucina had run her through, she thought bitterly. 

True, she had averted the fate she’d seen in her nightmares and Chrom had not fallen in the battle against Validar. He had a hole in his chest, put there by her own hand and by her design, but he lived. And yet the fell dragon had awakened regardless.

The now horrifyingly familiar voice of Grima—Grima! She was Grima!—slithered to the forefront of her mind, seeping into her thoughts.

_It’s useless to resist. I am inevitable. I am you, and you will become me._

Robin pulled together her shredded composure to push the voice down, but she had the distinct impression that it only went silent out of an amused sort of patience, confident that she would crumble soon enough.

She was Grima, or at least a living vessel for his return, and she was an idiot for not putting the pieces together before Validar had triumphantly handed her the answer.

“You have power...like mine,” the Voice of Naga had told her, and none of them had given it much weight at the time. Too many other things had crowded Robin’s worries. There were more immediate problems on their collective plate as they set out to gather the Fire Emblem’s stones. Lady Tiki’s cryptic words had been lost in the chaos of all the other revelations.

Robin looked down at Chrom, bandaged and resting in their tent. She had been a hair’s breadth from ceding control to Grima and killing him for real. She knelt at her injured husband’s bedside and tried very hard not to think of dragon gods or fate or the possible futures awaiting them. Mostly, she did not succeed.

Chrom stirred fitfully on the cot, his bleary eyes taking in her obvious distress. She tried hard to mask her feelings, keeping her face turned away as she reached for a damp cloth to swab away the sweat from his brow, but her hand trembled.

“Robin—!” he started, his eyes filled with concern. “Talk to me.” He reached for her hand, but she jerked it away. It was absurd, considering how often he’d held her hand before, but it felt like letting him touch it would taint him too.

Even in the past when she had been blissfully ignorant of its meaning, that mark had always made her uneasy, and she had always taken great pains to cover it with gloves and wrist guards. Chrom would make sappy little comments about loving every part of her, determinedly kissing right in the middle of the mark, but it never made her stomach squirm less to look upon the thing herself.

Chrom was always like that, though. He allowed himself to be carried on a tide of relentless optimism, and she always let him pull her along in his wake.

“Robin…” he said, quieter this time. He looked pained. When she only shook her head, he once again reached out, grasping for her hand. Robin made a half-hearted attempt to pull away but caved, allowing him to clasp her hand tightly with his own. “Robin. Look at me. _Please.”_

She tried to meet his eyes, but her gaze skittered over his own dragon-mark on his bare shoulder, and she shivered to see it.

When she’d explained the disgust she felt at the sight of her mark, he’d waved it off. When she’d protested that she was ill-suited to be the wife of an Exalt, he’d laughed and said he knew no one better. When she’d confessed her disturbing, distressing nightmares of watching him die by her hand, he’d only held her closer and insisted he knew her to be incapable of doing such a thing. Every time, she had let him comfort her, defend her from her own gut-instinct regarding her true nature.

She had let herself be convinced that she was nothing more than a normal woman, the discomforting mark on the back of her hand an unimportant relic of a forgotten past, and something that had no bearing on their future. 

She was a fool.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, and she hated how weak her voice sounded, how inadequate her words were. “I’m sorry, I—” she looked down at the bandages crossing his chest, and her vision blurred. Chrom squeezed her hand, and she started crying in earnest. 

It was so very _Chrom_ for him to comfort her when she was the one who almost killed him.

A few of Robin’s tears spattered down on his bandages and naked shoulders before she hastily wiped them away.

“I meant what I said, you know. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t torture yourself over this,” he said.

Robin scowled. “But I did plan for this to happen. I gambled on severely wounding you to get us out, and I almost killed you anyway!”

“You didn’t, though.”

Chrom’s ability to stubbornly cling to positives was a formidable opponent. At times, it was a boon—he was her staunchest defender, even from herself.

That didn’t make his obstinacy less frustrating to argue against when it made him a danger to himself, however.

His unshakeable faith in her goodness was unbearable, but she was exhausted, and the thought of letting him soothe her feelings was too great a temptation. She bent over him, gently butting their foreheads together, and closed her eyes.

“You did what was necessary, and we won,” Chrom said. “We’re both still right here.”

She didn’t say anything about how it hardly felt like a victory with him critically injured and the biggest threat still looming on the horizon. Robin, craven and scared, let him assure her that he was going to talk to Naga and perform the Awakening and put everything right with her by his side, and she told herself that his trust in her wasn’t misplaced. 

Maybe if she lied to herself enough, she would believe it too.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics in the note at the beginning from [We Sink by CHVRCHES.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8HI6-Ij3LI)


End file.
